Using Forensic Analytics to Investigate Hidden Fees, Overbilling, and Subscription Billing Practices

Consumer protection enforcement increasingly centers on whether consumers understand what they are paying for, when charges occur, and how to stop future payments.  Recent legal developments show that junk fees, drip pricing, hidden charges, automatic renewals, and subscription billing practices are no longer limited to isolated consumer complaints. These charges now drive federal and state enforcement, private litigation, and compliance risk across areas such as event ticketing, lodging, rental housing, financial services, e-commerce, digital subscriptions, and recurring services.

In April 2026, the Federal Trade Commission announced a $10 million settlement with StubHub over allegations that the company failed to disclose the full ticket price for live events, including mandatory fees, at the outset of the transaction.[i]  In June 2026, the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority fined StubHub UK and ordered refunds for more than 50,000 customers after finding that the company used hidden ticket fees, as well.[ii] Also in June, New Jersey launched a statewide junk fee initiative,[iii] while Connecticut is implementing new consumer protection laws requiring advertised prices to include most mandatory fees beginning July 1, 2026.[iv]

The common thread across these developments is data.  Whether the issue involves a hidden ticket fee, an undisclosed rental charge, a recurring subscription, or a post-cancellation billing event, the answers are found within transactions, pricing data, customer account histories, payment processing records, cancellation data, complaint records, and system audit trails. For companies, regulators, plaintiffs, and defense counsel, leveraging forensic data analytics can move the discussion to a defensible understanding of what happened, who was affected, and whether the conduct was isolated or systemic.

The Enforcement Landscape is Expanding

The FTC’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, which took effect in 2025, prohibits bait-and-switch pricing and fee-related misrepresentations in live-event ticketing and short-term lodging.[v]  The StubHub settlement is significant because it demonstrates how quickly a pricing display issue can become an enforcement matter requiring consumer compensation and changes to how total prices are represented.

Simultaneously, enforcement is expanding beyond the federal landscape. State AGs continue to target fee transparency through unfair and deceptive acts and practices laws, pricing requirements, and industry-specific rules. As stated above, New Jersey’s initiative directs agencies to review junk fees across regulated industries and indicates further attention to drip pricing and hidden surcharges.[vi] Connecticut’s new consumer protection provisions require businesses to include most fees and charges in advertised prices, with exceptions for taxes and certain government-mandated charges.

Rental housing is also becoming a prominent area of fee scrutiny. Greystar, the largest multi-family rental property manager in the United States, was recently pursued over alleged hidden rental fees, resulting in a $24 million settlement in December 2025.[vii]  Ongoing rental fee litigation has highlighted the complexity of mandatory and discretionary charges, including fees that are unclear, duplicative, or difficult to evaluate before lease execution.[viii]

Subscription billing and negative option practices present a similar risk. In January 2026, the FTC sued JustAnswer, alleging that consumers were led to believe they were paying a small one-time fee but were enrolled in recurring monthly subscriptions without affirmative consent.[ix] The FTC is also assessing negative option rules in 2026, reinforcing that automatic renewals, trial period conversions, and cancellation mechanisms remain active areas of regulatory focus.[x]

These developments are not simply limited to junk fee cases. For example, New York lawmakers passed a bill in June 2026 that would ban individualized pricing based on personal data, reflecting growing scrutiny of how companies use consumer data to set prices differently across their customer base.[xi] These actions reinforce the need to understand the data behind pricing, billing, and customer treatment.

Following the Data

In fee and subscription matters, the issues sound straightforward: a fee was not disclosed, a charge was misleading, a cancellation did not work, or a consumer did not consent. But the investigative work is usually more complicated.

Key questions often include:

• What price was displayed to the customer? Companies may present different prices across websites, mobile apps, email campaigns, or advertisements. A forensic analysis compares front-end price displays against back-end transactional data to determine whether fees were included, omitted, or introduced later in the purchase flow.
• What fees were charged and why? A customer invoice can include service fees, processing fees, administrative charges, delivery fees, renewal charges, surcharges, taxes, credits, discounts, and reversals. Forensic analytics can classify fees by type, timing, and business rule to determine whether charges were consistent with disclosed terms, as well as flag exceptions including undisclosed fees, duplicate charges, fee increases after sign-up, and fees assessed after cancellation.
• Who was affected, and was the issue isolated or systemic? Forensic analytics identifies and quantifies affected account populations by testing transactions against objective criteria, such as customers charged a fee after a policy change, customers who paid a fee not shown in the initial price display, or customers converted from a trial to a paid subscription without evidence of consent. Grouping customers by enrollment date, product, platform, geography, or cancellation path can reveal whether issues were concentrated in a particular time period, customer cohort, or purchasing channel.
• Did consumers cancel and did billing stop? Subscription cases often focus on whether billing stopped when customers ask it to. Forensic analytics can compare cancellation timestamps, customer service records, renewal events, payment attempts, refunds, and chargebacks to identify post-termination billing or failed cancellation workflows.
• What do complaints reveal? Connecting customer complaints, support tickets, refund requests, and chargebacks to underlying transactions helps assess whether complaints reflect broader patterns or isolated customer service issues.

Why This Matters Before a Subpoena or Complaint

Companies often treat fee and subscription billing issues as legal, marketing, or customer service problems. However, the ability to answer billing-related data questions quickly becomes critical.  Can the company identify all of the customers that were charged a particular fee? Can it show which charges were displayed at the time of purchase? Can it distinguish optional fees from mandatory charges? Can it prove consent to recurring billing? Can it confirm that cancellations stopped future charges?

For counsel, forensic analytics can support early case assessment, internal investigations, regulator responses, remediation planning, class certification analysis, settlement discussions, and ongoing compliance monitoring. For companies, the same techniques can be used proactively to test whether billing practices align with disclosures before regulators, plaintiffs, or customers identify the issue first.

The recent enforcement activity around junk fees, drip pricing, rental fees, ticketing platforms, and subscription billing shows that consumer protection risk is increasingly embedded in data systems. For companies, counsel, and regulators, the ability to quickly answer billing questions has become essential. What was charged, who was affected, and whether the conduct was isolated or systemic are no longer questions that should wait for litigation. Forensic analytics is not just a reactive tool but an investigative discipline that can help determine what happened, measure consumer impact, and build a defensible factual record before a subpoena arrives.